North China's Shanxi province has made efforts to build infrastructure in poor areas during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20), benefiting more poor households.

Priority has been given to transportation infrastructure construction during the period by focusing on building and renovating rural roads and constructing tourist roads, including the Yellow River No 1, Great Wall No 1 and Taihang No 1 roads.

Since 2016, Shanxi has completed 62,000 kilometers of rural roads in 58 impoverished counties, offered 2.8 million employment opportunities to workers in poverty-stricken areas and paid 2.6 billion yuan ($399.04 million) for employee salaries, benefiting 1.56 million poor people and 4,117 poverty-stricken villages.

A total of 4,250 km of tourist roads – the Yellow River No 1, Great Wall No 1 and Taihang No 1 roads – are under construction, and 3,469 km has been completed. The improved tourism transportation network has promoted the development of rural tourism and brought wealth to impoverished areas. 

Also, the improvement of rural electricity infrastructure has helped impoverished areas to get rid of poverty. 

State Grid Shanxi Electric Power Co has accelerated photovoltaic power stations' connection to the grid since 2016 to help poor people increase their incomes. Over the past five years, Shanxi realized the grid connection and operation of photovoltaic projects with a total capacity of 2.60 million kilowatts, which benefited 203,000 poor households. 

Work-for-relief in the infrastructure construction sector has also seen fruitful results. 

During the five-year period, Shanxi has invested 1.03 billion yuan in 994 work-for-relief projects to expand farmlands, build roads, bridges and dikes, and improve the rural environment, paying 138 million yuan for labor services, including 59 million yuan to poor people.